Shotgun Announces Tank, a New Way to Manage VFX/Animation Assets

Aimed at Evolving Workflows—Linked Across the Globe—with an App Framework that Organizes, Automates and Changes to Fit Need

Shotgun Software has introduced Tank, a new asset management system built on top of its namesake production tracking system, Shotgun. Tank, which will automate and organize file-based workflows even as they evolve over time, is currently in private beta and will be on display in live demos throughout SIGGRAPH, August 7 – 9, 2012.

Driven by the economic realities of globally distributed teams, emerging 4K image pipelines, and, of course, stereo conversion, visual effects companies are often in a constant state of adaptation. Through its unifying app framework and tight integration with Shotgun, Tank aims to be all things to as many effects people as possible, essentially letting them adapt the asset manager to the needs and styles of different developers, artists and supervisors and across the geographically separated pipeline.

Shotgun has already built a number of fully-integrated apps that access and modify data inside the Shotgun platform. Now, customers like Pixomondo, who used Shotgun to manage effects assets on the Oscar-winning 3D film Hugo, will be able to use Tank to unify multiple facility locations on a single asset management system that is also flexible enough, through custom Python-scripted or other apps, to conform to each facility or project's specific requirements.

Tank's App Store also features some 30 downloadable automation apps that work right out of the box and are natively integrated with Maya, Nuke, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, Houdini and Photoshop. While Mari, Katana, Softimage and After Effects support is notably missing at this time, the Shotgun team says it is planning to address the omissions in subsequent versions of Tank.

Shotgun Software will demo Tank at SIGGRAPH in Booth #837 and will host its annual User Group Meeting on Tuesday, August 7, at 2:00 PM. For a better look at the interface, check out the video tutorial above.